Transforming Waste: Innovative Recycling and Sustainable Practices in Montgomery County

Discover the secrets to transforming waste into valuable resources on our latest episode of "What's Happening MoCo." This week, we sit down with Eileen Kao, Chief of the Waste Reduction and Recycling Section, who shares her invaluable insights on how Montgomery County is leading the way in waste reduction and recycling. From practical tips on reusing and repairing everyday items to the county's innovative textile recycling program, Eileen's expertise will inspire you to rethink your waste habits and contribute to a more sustainable community.

Hungry to know how Montgomery County is tackling food waste? We'll explore the county's forward-thinking approach to food scrap management, launched in 2018. Learn about the "Food is Too Good to Waste" campaign, which educates residents on reducing food waste through smart meal planning and portion control. Additionally, you'll hear about the award-winning Commercial Food Scraps Recycling Partnership Program that helps businesses convert food scraps into renewable resources and the efforts in edible food recovery to support those in need.

Finally, witness the groundbreaking work of DC Water under the stewardship of Chris, Director of Resource Recovery. Chris takes us through the process of turning human waste into "Bloom," a nutrient-rich fertilizer that's revolutionizing gardening and farming practices. Steve Dubik from the Montgomery County Master Gardener Program joins us to discuss ornamental horticulture and the fantastic resources available to residents, such as plant clinics and demonstration gardens. This episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice on how to live more sustainably and make the most of our resources.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Good day and welcome to what's Happening MoCo, a podcast from your award-winning government television station, county Cable Montgomery. Now here's your host, derek Kenney. Good day, welcome to what's Happening MoCo. Today we have another knockout edition of what's Happening MoCo, and today we're talking about waste reduction, we're talking about recycling, we're talking about all the ways that organizations in the county well, particularly the community, but also using technologies and using our good efforts to find ways to be better world citizens, and one of those ways is through the waste reduction and recycling section of Montgomery County, maryland. And to talk about what that is, we have the chief, eileen KO. How are you today, eileen?

Speaker 2: 1:06

I'm very well, thanks, derek.

Speaker 1: 1:08

All right, well, thank you so much for being here. In some ways, the title Waste Reduction and Recycling Section speaks for itself, but in some ways it's hard to totally understand what a government agency does when it comes to what they do. So what can you tell us about what your area does?

Speaker 2: 1:46

County and folks visiting Montgomery County to reduce the amount of waste that they create, to begin with, to reuse items over and over again to maximize their useful life, and then to be sure to recycle everything that's possible to recycle.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Oh, wow, okay, and so that. So you, it's more of a kind of an outreach thing. So you do you, your team, educates people, provide them with tools. What are some of the ways that you're educating people to reduce waste or to recycle in their own homes?

Speaker 2: 2:16

Yeah, absolutely we. We do a lot of outreach, education, technical assistance and training and we do that across the board. So, you're right, we do that for single family residents, residents that are in single family homes. We also do that for residents of multifamily apartments and condos and co-ops. We also do that for businesses and organizations, and we define a business as anything that's not residential in nature. So that means it's your conventional enterprise businesses, it's also your nonprofit organizations and its government facilities at every level federal, state and local. So for my team and myself, our clients, our customers, it's literally everyone in Montgomery County, whether you're living in the county, working in the county or visiting the county. So we do a lot of outreach, education, trainings, all of that, all of that.

Speaker 2: 3:24

And again, we really focus on kind of the whole loop in terms of how to sustainably manage materials. Really, it starts with trying to get people to reduce the amount of waste they create to begin with. Right, looking at things that you're thinking of purchasing or thinking of using and really focusing on do you really need that item? Oh, wow. And so we really want people to reduce the amount of waste that they create to begin with, and then the things that we do have and use, and you know, we all know, in the course of a day, there are a lot of things that we actually do need, right to accomplish things, and so it's about reusing those things over and over and over again, really making sure that their useful lives go on as long as possible. So you know, for example, if you have an article clothing and maybe you've lost the buttons over time, well, it's going back to basics and saying, okay, well, how can I fix this, literally, how can I repair this and keep on wearing?

Speaker 1: 4:38

it. Keep on using it, hold on. So you're suggesting that today's modern resident, instead of throwing away a shirt that has a missing button, we can get that repaired? Yeah, and then that reduces waste.

Speaker 3: 4:50

You don't have to throw a shirt away.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Absolutely, you don't have to spend extra money, so that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Okay, it's kind of getting back to basics isn't it?

Speaker 1: 4:58

Yeah, really.

Speaker 2: 4:58

And focusing on those things. Yeah, and maybe if it's something, for example, if you have children and they've outgrown clothing, which we know that happens even with adults sometimes, and so you know. I do too, I do too, and so, you know, one of the things is thinking about well, if it's still in good condition dignity condition then we should really think about donating it, giving it to someone else who could then use it, and again, that's extending its useful life, right yeah, yeah, how can we do that?

Speaker 1: 5:36

or where are some of the places we can donate clothing? Or do we just google donate clothing? Or how does that work well, there are.

Speaker 2: 5:43

there are so many places. There really are so many places these days, right, and so, of course, google is our friend. It's like, what did we do before Google existed? And so, yeah, you can Google and and find a lot of places locally near you where you can donate items. You know, and that comes. It comes in all forms. It comes in charitable organizations or philanthropic organizations. It comes in the form of just other organizations that are, again, they're thinking about things that they need and looking at ways that they can secure those items, but maybe with either a limited budget or in ways where there's less waste, so thinking about, well, maybe someone else has excess of those items that we need and would be willing to donate them. Wow, yeah, yeah, now there does come. Sometimes. You, you know I mentioned dignity condition.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:46

I think that you know, we also need to consider when we're trying to donate items for reuse. You know, is that something that's really something that you would offer to someone and say, hey, I can't use this anymore. Would you like to use it?

Speaker 1: 7:03

Right.

Speaker 2: 7:03

There are times when things may be too soiled or too torn that they really can't, they're not in dignity condition and they really can't be, you know, used again, for example, clothing, textiles, whatever. And for those, for those items actually we do have in our division we've got a great textile recycling program.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Oh really, yeah, you can recycle. I mean textiles. You can recycle clothing or fabrics. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Again, we're looking for highest and best use. So of course, if it's something still usable and in good condition, then we always advocate well, donate it to a charitable organization or give it to someone else who can then use it in its original form, right what it was intended to be used for. But if it's been used over and, over and over again and it's seen better days and it really can't be used again in that form, then yeah, we have this great textiles recycling program and people can drop off at our transfer station, which is very conveniently located in the center of Montgomery County. They can bring those textiles to us and those will actually get recycled.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 8:30

It'll get used to. Other materials would be processed and, you know, chopped up and reformatted and used to make things like insulation, cleaning cloths, that again, these are new items that have a new purpose, yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:34

It's great that you're using innovation or like technology or just rethinking. You know it's like you don't just throw. You don't want to throw these things away. There's still value there, so you're going to use it. You're not just recycling like cans. So you think you think about recycling. And when I think about recycling it's usually just bottles, plastics, can, tin cans, but you're talking about recycling clothing. That's amazing. What other innovative things? I think you mentioned something with food earlier innovative things I think you mentioned something with food earlier. What other ways can residents knock out? You know the ways to actually be better, to reduce that footprint?

Speaker 2: 9:13

Yeah, yeah. So, Derek, you know we do have a very ambitious goal here in Montgomery County. Our goal is to reduce waste and recycle more, aiming for zero waste, no waste.

Speaker 1: 9:26

Zero waste, zero waste. Okay, I don't know how that's going to. All right, it sounds great.

Speaker 2: 9:30

It is ambitious. We we know, we're confident, we can make a lot of headway and we can make a lot of progress toward this goal. And one of the areas, one of the many areas that we are currently focusing on, has to do with food scraps. In some jurisdictions they call it food waste and in some periodicals articles you'll see the term food waste. We actually don't call it food waste. We refer to it as food scraps because the material it's not a waste. It's a really great material that can be renewed again and made into something new again.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Oh, wow, Okay yeah yeah, so in 2018, we published a strategic plan to address food scraps. Right To try to advance composting, compost use and food scraps diversion here in Montgomery County. Diversion, meaning, divert it from the waste stream. Oh, wow, right. Okay, so we are going full bore on food scraps in a lot of different aspects, and the reason is we do something kind of interesting, I would say On a periodic basis in our division we do a waste composition study. So what we do is we literally go through the waste, take a lot of samplings and we sort the waste into many, many different categories and through this study, this periodic study, what we have seen is that the next material that is, in the greatest quantity that we find disposed in the trash is, in fact, food scraps, and we know that there is a way to separate those food scraps and recycle them. But again, even before that, one of the aspects of what we are doing is we are trying to really focus attention on ways to reduce the amount of wasted food in Montgomery County.

Speaker 3: 11:41

To begin with, and so we have this education campaign.

Speaker 2: 11:43

It's called Food is Too Good to begin with oh, wow. And so we have this education campaign. It's called Food is Too Good to Waste Okay, all right. Yeah. And we have a lot of great tips and recommendations on you know ways that we can all reduce the amount of wasted food that we create. Amount of wasted food that we create. It's everything from making sure that you plan your meals ahead of time. Plan and see what you need. Take a look at your pantry, take a look at your refrigerator, see what you need, what ingredients you need in order to make those meals. So have that as a shopping list and when you go and shop, try to make sure that you are buying things that you actually are going to use, right. And then it's that we have tips on how to have creative recipes and do meal preparation in ways that really cut down on waste. It also has to do with serving portions as we enjoy our meals. We really could go to a point where we're not supersizing things but we're right-sizing things and just prepare what is necessary.

Speaker 2: 13:04

And when you do have leftovers, or if you are proactively cooking for a number of meals ahead and you wanna you know, you know sort of save for those future meals, then we have tips on how to safely store those. You know those pre-prepared foods and you know everything from using reusable containers to freeze these items, labeling the day that you've frozen the items and what's in that container, the day that you've frozen the items and what's in that container. So, yeah, so it's interesting. It's really trying to remind ourselves to kind of go back and consider some real basics, right?

Speaker 2: 13:51

The other thing that we are working on is edible food recovery. On is edible food recovery and what that is. If you have food that is in excess of your needs and this holds true whether you're a resident or whether you're a restaurant or a food preparation business if you have foods that are in excess of your needs, then let's increase the amount of this type of food that we donate to organizations that are food assistance providing, because there are so many residents, so many neighbors, so many people in our community that actually they struggle, they are experiencing food insecurity and they have unmet needs and they really need access to consistent, consistent access to nutritious, good foods. So so we want to increase the donations of edible foods so that others may, you know, may benefit and use those.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So by reducing waste you can also benefit our neighbors and friends that may be food insecure at the same time, so you have a double benefit there as well.

Speaker 3: 15:16

Oh wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 15:17

That's amazing. It's good that you're doing that, and then you're doing it through education, doing it through programming, helping people be more thoughtful, more mindful as they think about getting rid of old clothing, as they think about finishing that last meal, as they think about going shopping, or before they go to McDonald's and decide to supersize or right size their meal, so that we're not filling a trash can up with french fries right, or cheeseburger bits or whatever else there is. What other ways, what other things did you want residents of the county to know about being mindful when it comes to waste management in the county?

Speaker 2: 15:59

being mindful when it comes to waste management in the county. Well, I would like people to know that we continue to work on other aspects of really recycling food that is not edible any longer. Right, we have some awesome, creative, award-winning programs that we have in place, and I think I want to share that information and really get people to help us spread the word. One of the programs is our Commercial Food Scraps Recycling Partnership Program, and this is aimed towards or geared to the commercial sector, the businesses, and so for any of the businesses and organizations that generate food, that prepare food and generate food. We have this program that I call it a training wheel program. It's a really cool program where we intensively will work with any of the partners that sign on to this program intensively over the course of a couple of years. They're with us in this program.

Speaker 2: 17:07

We provide outreach, education, technical assistance, training. We help them to set up food scrap separation in their restaurant or their grocery store or their bodega, in their cafeteria. We actually will then also provide collection services. We will collect those food scraps they put together on a periodic basis and we will deliver those materials, the food scraps, to a facility in the region where we have secured processing capacity and we deliver that food scraps, material there and it is actually composted into a new product, a soil amendment. Yeah, that then appears. It's bagged and it appears on the shelves of different stores and landscapers and homeowners and everybody can purchase that material and use that material.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Oh wow, Can you describe that process again?

Speaker 2: 18:10

Sure Well, commercial generators of food scraps can contact us.

Speaker 1: 18:14

Okay.

Speaker 2: 18:15

And we will start to look at how much food scrap material they generate.

Speaker 1: 18:18

Okay.

Speaker 2: 18:19

And work with them. It really needs to be a business or organization that has never done this previously, and so we will take them through on setting up the infrastructure internally to separate their food scraps for recycling. We provide them the containers that they will put the food scraps into. We provide them training for all of their employees.

Speaker 2: 18:56

And we have a lot of different materials posters, stickers, labels, everything that they would need and we are always available to them to help them troubleshoot if there are any bumps in the road or issues that come up. But then, furthermore, we actually have two of our own trucks small trucks that we use to collect food scraps for recycling, and so each week, on a schedule, regular schedule, we will pick up the food scraps that they have collected up and stored up. And we pick up the food scraps materials. We weigh we like to get a lot of data and a lot of great information we weigh that material and then we take that material and we transport it and deliver it to a composting facility in the region where we have previously already secured a certain amount of tonnage capacity that that facility has guaranteed we have access to. So we provide that food scraps material, they process it and what they process it into they add grass, they add leaves, they add materials and it becomes a soil amendment.

Speaker 1: 20:10

Oh, wow, yeah, A soil amendment, soil amendment, yep, yep.

Speaker 2: 20:14

It's marketed under the product name Leaf Grow Gold.

Speaker 1: 20:22

That's a pretty name Okay.

Speaker 2: 20:24

Yeah, and it's sold on a retail basis, and then people can purchase that material and use that in their gardens and their flower beds. Wow, all right.

Speaker 1: 20:36

That's really in line with what we'll be talking about next. Thank you so much for being here, miss KO, and I like to say I think that's a great name because it just reminds me to knock out. You know, knock out the things, obstacles to climate change, knock out wasting food, knock out not using utilizing food scraps efficiently, and just knock it out. Knock out the box, the whole notion that we, as a greener county, cannot get all the way down to zero, which is our goal. All right, thank you so much for being here today. And that's what's happening moco.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Next we talked to chris piiat, and his company is talking about how you should not waste anything, much less human waste. What Good day we're back. We're back with Chris Piat. He's an environmental engineer with more than 25 years experience in wastewater treatment, residuals, reuse and recycling big words. His work experience includes operations manager for 1,200 ton a day, implementation of the Bloom products, which we'll learn about a little bit later, and marketing plan development for new biosolids reuse options, development of a nationally recognized research program.

Speaker 1: 21:58

Let's just say he's the boss. He's the boss, he's the environmental boss for DC Water and he's here today to talk to us about something I found not a waste of time to talk about Something that I found to be kind of innovative and very, very surprising. Usually, when I see a brown bag of stuff left on the table, I kind of push it to the sides, so but today we're going to talk about it. We'll get right into it. Chris, I've heard about your organization, dc Water, using what can only be described as human waste. Yes, to create something beneficial to gardeners. And to make sure that I understand this totally correctly what are we describing as human waste?

Speaker 4: 22:42

Sure. So I'm an engineer and I am the director of resource recovery at DC Water. I work at the giant wastewater treatment plant Blue Plains. We don't even call it a wastewater treatment plant anymore, we call it a resource recovery facility because it's our job to take the pollutants.

Speaker 4: 22:57

I'm going to use air quotes the pollutants out of the water and make sure they don't end up in the Chesapeake Bay, and it's largely carbon and nutrients that we want to keep out of the bay to ensure that we don't have algae blooms. But carbon is energy, nutrients are fertilizer. Both have value. So we designed and constructed equipment to maximize those assets. It's my job to maximize the assets that we produce.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Okay, Now, and just to be clear, because sometimes I want to make sure that our audience gets what we're saying. Sure, when we say human waste, we're not talking about trash bags or newspapers. No, we're talking about literally people. You could say it.

Speaker 1: 23:35

You flush your toilet and it has to go somewhere. That's right, and you don't think about where it's going, and I guess we always. Sometimes you assume that it is dumped into a river somewhere. Right, but there's actually. Your organization is basically taking and you're considering this waste as bio, some type of bio Biosolids, Biosolids Okay no-transcript.

Speaker 4: 24:21

It serves, of course, all of DC, but it also serves two counties in Maryland, montgomery and Prince George's County, and two counties in suburban Virginia. Percent of our flow comes in from Maryland, which means that of the 155, 160,000 tons a year of biocells that we produce, about 40,000 tons come directly from Montgomery County.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Wow, so we contribute 40 tons to this fine product. And this product ultimately, in one of its forms at least, is fertilizer and you've been kind enough to bring this, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:00

This brown bag. Usually, when there's a brown bag left on a doorstep or something you know, you don't touch it, or it's set on fire and you're supposed to stop it Okay. But in this case it's similar contents. But what can we? As we're looking at this brown bag, it seems very simple, nondescript. What purpose or what value did we glean from this product here?

Speaker 4: 25:24

Sure. So you know, we installed all this equipment. We invested money so that we could maximize the assets, and we chose every piece of equipment with product quality in mind. So we wanted to make a very stable, low odor fertilizer product that's called Fresh Bloom. Fresh bloom okay, it comes straight off our belts, we put it into trucks, it goes out to farms, it goes to soil blenders. We also make blends that are more sort of homeowner friendly. You can use this on your garden, on your lawn. It's this is our sand blend. It's got sand and wood fines in it can I open it?

Speaker 1: 25:54

yes, yeah, yeah, I was.

Speaker 1: 25:56

I held back earlier, just in case there's some natural odor, it is not going to smell like you think it smells here, all right, so this is a bag of fertilizer created from human waste from around the area, including Montgomery County, that people can use in their gardens. And I'm going to sniff it, all right. Yeah, it just smells. It smells kind of grass, like grassy, kind of like soil, like really like the garden dirt you would buy from home depot, right, exactly what we're trying. Okay, and that's what you want to do yeah, I mean we we wanted to.

Speaker 4: 26:35

I mean, it's what we're doing is is making sort of a manufactured topsoil. It's a neutrified topsoil and it's it really. All we do at the plant is accelerated nature. If the analogy I like to use is if a bear was in the woods and it rumbled out to the river and it scooped up a salmon and it ate some and then it went back into the woods, pooped in the woods, the soil microbes would break down that organic nitrogen into plant available inorganic nitrogen so that you could make soil. It just takes 18 months to do out in the woods and we're doing it in a matter of days. We've accelerated the nature.

Speaker 1: 27:08

All right in a matter of days. That's great. Yep. So instead of things just ending up in a big landfill or in some type of swamp somewhere or on a barge just traveling the world, your organization is able to take tons and tons of waste of different types and process it to some type of innovative product, such as bloom. We talked a little bit earlier with the chief waste reduction and recycling section chief about some of the creative ways the county's employing to kind of do what they do to make sure that we are recycling the best we can, to make sure that we are reducing waste and managing waste the best we can. As a long-term environmental engineer, how many years have you started?

Speaker 4: 27:52

About 30 years 30 years, 30 years.

Speaker 3: 27:54

Doesn't seem possible.

Speaker 1: 27:55

What role does innovation have in terms of reducing waste and managing waste and effectively recycling things?

Speaker 4: 28:06

Well, there are so many opportunities, a lot of cities for this product in particular. There are still a lot of cities that just treat it like a liability and they truck it away and they lock it in a landfill and that sort of makes me cry because it's not maximizing that asset. In our group, our mantra is there's no such thing as waste, only wasted resources. So there's tons of opportunities to innovate and look at waste streams and peel things out that have value so that we can reuse them again, so we don't have to manufacture new ones Like for this. If a farmer uses bloom on a field, it's A sequestering carbon in the soil and B it's avoiding the use of ammonium nitrate in organic fertilizer. That takes a ton of energy to make, so it has a huge benefit from a carbon footprint standpoint as well.

Speaker 1: 28:53

Oh, wow, so it's a double benefit for the, I guess the places that you serve, also for your organization. Yes, so I assume this is a for sale product. I guess People can buy bloom, okay.

Speaker 4: 29:04

So I assume this is a for sale product I guess people can buy bloom.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Okay, so you're taking something that's really, that is the opposite of bloom and you've created something that helps flowers to bloom. Yes, how do people learn more about your company, dc Water, and then also where to find your products?

Speaker 4: 29:22

Sure, we've got a couple of websites. Dcwatercom has a ton of information about our innovations. If you search around the website, you can find that. And we also have a separate website for Bloom. It's called Bloomsoilcom One word Bloomsoil and that has a million pictures. It's got testimonials from farmers and gardeners, it has all of the spec sheets for all the products and you can order it from the website. Oh, awesome.

Speaker 1: 29:48

Awesome. This is good to, and again the URL for the website again, bloomsoilcom.

Speaker 1: 29:52

All right, great, great. Now, I'm not a gardener. I'm not. I'm a matter of fact, I think I'm a novice when it comes to anything. Green thumb know all the things that a product like Bloom Fertilizer will do, but I do know that we have someone coming up next that will tell us all about how we could use fertilizer or how we can better use the resources around our own homes, our greenery, our gardens, our grass. And, as a matter of fact, he's not a novice. He's quite the opposite, he is a master. So let's get him up here right next. Thank you, chris, for stopping by, and thank you for all the great work that DC Ward is doing. Hey, thanks. Who would have thought that you can do anything productive with human waste? I know.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Nobody talks about it, but we're very proud of it, but it's good to know that we're not wasting the ingenuity of the local businesses that are very green. I think, literally, you're a green business and, as we look at being a greener county, I think this is one of the ways that we can use innovation and supporting of corporate partners across the area to do better, do more and wow and have things grow through, I guess, bloom.

Speaker 4: 31:07

Yeah, thank you, montgomery County, for your contribution, your contribution is not wasted.

Speaker 1: 31:13

Okay, your contribution is not wasted. It's Bloom. And this is a paper bag full of fertilizer. Yes, and this is the Bloom product, and it's derived from, again, poop. There we go. I danced around it all day. There he is, it's from poop, so thank you, it goes full circle. Thank you so much, sir, for being here today. I appreciate it. Yep, thank you. All right, what? Okay, we just had a great conversation with Chris from DC Water talking about a product Bloom that's literally made from human waste Human waste and the product that it is is fertilizer.

Speaker 1: 31:55

And I think I mentioned to Chris that I am a novice when it comes to all things green. I know to cut my grass, I cut it to about two inches, maybe three inches. I'm not sure if I'm doing that right or not, but beyond that, my green thumb is a thumbs down, as my yard will tell you. But lucky for you out there, we have a master gardener in the house, steve Dubik. Yes, he serves as a coordinator for the Montgomery County Master Gardener Program, where he manages over 450 active volunteers who provide professional assistance around environmental ornamental through a telephone hotline, plant clinics, demonstration gardens and a speakers group. He receives a BS and MS in ornamental horticulture from the University of Maryland.

Speaker 2: 32:45

That's right so you're a hometown guy. We like University of Maryland, that's right. So you're a hometown guy, we like to hear that.

Speaker 3: 32:48

That's great.

Speaker 1: 32:50

Now, in my program, I always want to make sure that we break things down so that people like myself can understand what's going on, what is ornamental?

Speaker 3: 32:58

horticulture Okay, ornamental, yeah. There's different kinds of horticulture, so ornamental is dealing with like trees, flowers, shrubs, annuals, perennials, things like that. Horticulture is like more of an intensive form of agriculture. So we're more on the ornamental side versus like maybe the food production side, like of growing vegetables or fruit or things like that. So it's just part of agriculture.

Speaker 1: 33:23

Wonderful, okay, great. So it's just part of agriculture. Wonderful, okay, great. And so you and the volunteers in this program provide a resource to anyone that might have, or select people.

Speaker 3: 33:34

How does that work? Oh, we try to offer services in a variety of ways to the residents of Montgomery County through, as you were mentioning, we have a hotline. We have a hotline. We have about a dozen different plant clinics or Ask a Master Gardener. Some are in libraries or some are at some of the farmer's markets. We have a speakers group and we also were involved with therapeutic horticulture and there's several other programs. We have a lot of community events we get involved with. We have Earth Day and things like that, and we have several demonstration gardens, a nice big one up there in derwood wonderful, wonderful.

Speaker 1: 34:10

Okay, that's incredible. Now, now, what is that? What is the?

Speaker 3: 34:12

master gardener. Okay, so the idea of the master gardening program came to help the folks at the university of maryland extension or part of the extension. The extensions of the university of of Maryland Extension is the outreach educational arm of the university and each county has an agent, at least one or two, and very often, particularly in the past, we get lots and lots of gardening questions and they would tie up the agent, who had other duties, really to be more for the professional farmer or grower or nursery manager. So they started training volunteers and it started out out West, but eventually, you know, it got here on the East coast and Montgomery County was early on, and so we try to help the, the staff and the faculty there by answering a lot of these gardening questions and some of them are repetitive, some of them are very unique, one time only. That kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 35:04

Oh, great. Now I do have a question. I mentioned last segment. What's the purpose of fertilizer? I mean, I'm a novice, I know that you put plants in the ground and you throw water on them and they grow. Sure, what's the purpose of fertilizer? I know there's a need for it, so what's the purpose of fertilizer for people that are gardening or that have farms? What's the utility of it?

Speaker 3: 35:29

Yeah, so the fertilizer is going to supply nutrients to the plants. Now, in many situations, like in a wooded area, in a forest that gets replenished each year as the leaves and twigs fall to the ground, but sometimes they're taken away, they're moved, or maybe the soils have some issues. They maybe the soils are, you know have some issues. They're compacted. Maybe there's not a lot of work. You know, leaf litter or we'll call organic matter there. So sometimes we need to add additional nutrients and sometimes we may not know what that is. So we should get our soil test and I should always, you know, push the idea of getting your soil test. So that's, we supply these nutrients so that the they're available to the plant and so, as the plant goes through the process of photosynthesis, it has the components it needs to make the sugars and things that it needs for it to grow.

Speaker 1: 36:10

Fantastic. Now what do you think about this product? I'm not sure what fertilizer is traditionally made of, but what do you think about a product that is made of human waste, and how viable is it for use in gardens around the Montgomery County?

Speaker 3: 36:25

area. Okay. So there's other traditional fertilizers, synthetic fertilizers, and they have their place and there's some advantages to it. But some of the things like the biosolids and these organics have is that the organic matter component itself, when it gets to the soil, helps to stimulate the soil ecosystem. It helps to encourage fungi and bacteria Most fungi and bacteria in the soil ecosystem. It helps to encourage the fungi and bacteria and most fungi and bacteria in the soil are beneficial directly or indirectly. So by providing that there, that's a real benefit to the soil and it helps the soil in a couple of ways. One is that these bacteria and fungi help to sometimes protect the plant. They help to assist the plant to get nutrients it couldn't get any other way. So there's a very often strong relationship, particularly for native plants, with the bacteria and the fungi that exist in the soil.

Speaker 3: 37:12

By providing this organic matter, that's essentially like the fuel. It's like I can analyze it it's like a freight train and you have all these different freight cars and as you break them apart you get energy. So as you add this organic matter, it gives the fuel to these microbes for them to grow. And one big benefit that sometimes people forget is as they grow, they give off byproducts that help the soil improve by clumping it together and that makes some of our soils which, if you know, if you've dumped around, derek, it's pretty hard right. So it clumps it together and and allows these pathways of air and water to go through the soil column. So when we get rain and whenever that comes, it hopefully will channel more down into the soil than, rather than, running off and that's a a big thing a stormwater runoff in here in county. We try to minimize that. Oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Now you kind of touched upon something I wanted to ask you about Many gardeners or others that are into they have green thumbs that are trying to grow things in Montgomery County Right now they have a problem. The problem is it's hot.

Speaker 3: 38:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:27

I don't know if we're in a drought, but there's not much water. It's very dry, the ground is hard. What tips do you have for novice gardeners, medium gardeners, anyone that's frustrated right now with trying to grow greenery in the Montgomery County area?

Speaker 3: 38:44

Well, right now there's probably not much you can do, but in the future not too far it should get cooler, the moisture should come. So at that point, if you're going to, let's say, install a bed, maybe later in the fall, the growing season, you want to incorporate organic matter, because that organic matter, as we mentioned, is going to provide nutrients, can improve the soil structure and then, for and for some soils, it's going to help to hold that moisture that gets there. So that's something you could do in the fall. And you can also do this with your lawn too. So in the fall and the lawns are all toasty right now, nothing, you just got to wait it out, it's crunchy, it's real crunchy.

Speaker 3: 39:26

So in in the fall, uh, when you seed, often we do this kind of together we, we seed, or I'm sure you'd say we aerate, we pull little plugs of soil out and then we drop seed and then we add some organic matter and those you know a combination of those things really helps for the turf to get established. And what we're using? Instead of a synthetic fertilizer, we're using this organic biosolid or compost or you know a product like that, rather than that going to the landfill, and again, it provides nutrients, slowly helps them improve the soil structure, and so there's a lot of benefits from from using these bio solids and compost and organic matter, you're not just improving, not just providing nutrients.

Speaker 1: 40:09

You're improving the soil long term all right, right now there's someone that wants to learn more about master gardening in montgomery, county maryland, or master gardening, or to get tips how can I reach out to you and find out more about what you guys do?

Speaker 3: 40:22

gee, uh, I I just think the simplest thing to do is just Google Master Gardeners. But got to make sure you put Montgomery County in there, because if you don't do that, we want you to get to here. So you want to put Maryland Master Gardeners, Montgomery County, Maryland, because there are other Montgomery Counties All over the country and you should pop up.

Speaker 1: 40:44

We should be right at the top, as we should be. Montgomery County should always be at the top, yes, and what should be at the top of our minds is that we don't waste our time, energy or innovation. We don't waste almost anything in Montgomery County, maryland. How about that? Especially when it comes to the environment and becoming greener and having a smaller carbon footprint. Thank you so much today from Chris and Steve. And that's what's happening, moco finding ways to reduce waste and make better use of waste as we lead our way to zero when it comes to being a greener and healthier county in Montgomery County, maryland. Thanks for listening and please subscribe.